


I don't know my name

by nbmontclair



Category: Original Work
Genre: Asexual Character, Autistic Character, Gen, Other, Reflection, Stream of Consciousness
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-20
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:54:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29587524
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nbmontclair/pseuds/nbmontclair
Summary: A window into the mind of a human.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)





	1. Order in Chaos and Other People

My thoughts are so numerous and fast, sometimes it feels like I’m drowning under their currents. Sometimes I can’t sleep because I think too much. Sometimes I just want to scream to make them stop, just for a minute (I never have because then I'm the crazy person). The mania bleeds into my physical body as I fidget endlessly and listen to music constantly to distract me from both the chaos of the world and the chaos inside my head. 

I try to organize my room so out-of-place things don’t draw my attention. The disorder of my mind seeps in anyway as things are left on the dresser and desk when my mind leaps to the next thing. I try to organize my time so I’m always busy, so busy that my mind can’t wander off. It works until I lie in bed for sleep, alone with my thoughts that scatter in a million different directions. I try to organize my life so I’m armed with a plan when confronted with the unknown future. The detail of the world overwhelms me until my plan seems inadequate for the path ahead and then my brain spirals off to worst case scenarios and I can’t bring myself back.

I can’t make the thoughts stop, so I shape them. Order from chaos - it works for the most part. Stories, so many stories. I weave myself worlds where I fit. Where my eccentrics are not the same as here, but make me strong. I can talk, be funny, and face down my fears. I would write them down, but I could never capture every moment and person in a way that my perfectionist self would tolerate. 

But the person in my head is not me. They are who I want to be, were I not myself.

My head is so noisy and confusing that my words often come out the same way. It marks me as that awkward, weird kid who you do _not_ want to be friends with. In middle school, I learned that if I can’t make the words come out the way I want to, I'd better say nothing at all. 

So I watched them. Other people, I mean. I tried to understand how to talk, to connect with them. I analyzed their behavior and actions. It seems like they’re speaking a different language entirely. I watched and mimicked, like a baby copying their parents. 

I’ve watched for almost 10 years now, and I still don’t speak that language. Sometimes I can convey aspects. Sarcasm is both easy and hard. Tone is just as important as the words themselves. If I think too fast, I stumble over my words like a runner tripping over their own feet. I can make small talk, if the topic of weather is avoided (I study weather and can get very excited and ramble, which defeats the purpose of small talk). Forget interrupting people, I can almost never read how the pattern of a multi-person conversion flows enough to predict a pause for me, assuming I have my words in order. I still lack complete definitions for friend and significant other.

But for all this study and experimentation trying to speak “Other people,” nobody speaks "me".


	2. I am not myself

I want to be me and be proud of them, but I don’t know who that is. I know what I am not, but I cannot identify myself. Some part of me accepts the confusion as who I am, but not the rest of me. I cannot stand confusion and it frustrates me on bad days. 

I didn’t used to think of myself like this. I didn’t have any idea I could be anything other than what role I was assigned at birth and forced into my entire life. The way my mind works isolated me from my cisgender peers and made me the weird kid. I embraced that identity but still lived within my assigned role. I didn’t know what I could be.  I went down the internet rabbit hole and found more questions than answers. Who am I suddenly became a more difficult question. I never fit in the binary, then where did I belong? If I wasn’t male or female, what am I? 

I am just me, both the question and the answer. 

While my mind runs in circles trying to accept the gender confusion as me, my body isn’t me. This chest isn’t mine. These clothes cannot make the reflection in the mirror resemble the body I construct in my mind. It will be though. Perhaps not now, but I will make my body mine. Until then, my reflection in every mirror invokes stress and anxiety that I can’t cure.

* * *

I like gender neutral pronouns, but I struggle so much with using them for me in my mind. When that happens, I hurt inside because if I can’t even get my own pronouns right, then I must not be trans. But then if I’m not trans, I’m not anything. I’ll keep trying though, until I get it right.

There’s this name people call me because it was given to me, but it allows them to make assumptions about me that I don’t like. It’s not that I don’t like this name, I do. I just want people to hear my name and not be able to infer anything. 

There’s this name I keep to myself. I don’t know if it’s mine yet. I can’t tell if it’s mine. I don’t know what it sounds like, coming from someone’s lips who’s calling to me. I like how it sounds in my mind, but the person in my head is not me. Some people know it, but it’s not enough. I don’t know if it’s right, but I’m terrified that if I give the world this name and it sounds wrong, I won’t be able to take it back. I’m terrified that if I give the world this name, they’ll throw it back and call me by that other name.

One day, the world will say my name, and I will smile because it is mine. 

One day, I will look in the mirror and be happy because my body is mine.

One day, the gender chaos in my mind will fill me with pride because the chaos is me.

One day, I will be myself.


End file.
